Hieronimusing originally posted 6/14/01

Summer Solstice June 21, 2001

Moderners often make the mistake of looking at world mythologies as imaginary tales, or at the very best, interpretive storytelling. Yet over and over we are shown, that in fact, the world’s mythologies and often allegories, are both accounts of ancient events, and actual phenomena. Examining archetypes as they appear in various cultures, teaches that there are recurring ancient themes. Among them is the lost civilization, the sunken city of the sun, and lost continent from a golden age.

Plato’s Timaeus and Critias ( 380 B.C..) contain the best written historical account of Atlantis, the City of the Sun told to him, history tells us by Critias, who had been told the account by the Greek statesman Solon, who was instructed by an Egyptian.

Critias shared the account during Plato’s life in a presentation to Socrates and others . In his search for Atlantis, Jim M Allen, Author of Atlantis, the Andes Solution, like the discoverer of ancient Troy in the modern era, used an ancient Greek account as a guide to finding the lost city of Atlantis.

As Allen explained to me, “when you look at Plato’s writings, and you examine them for their literal description, having as I do an interest in sacred measurements, I was able to make of the measurements he provided, a descriptive layout of what we should be looking for.” Where was this great gateway to the sun where tradition teaches, a great civilization thrived and whose sacred measuring system was reflected in surviving cultures and its predecessors?

Notes Allen, Plato’s account using a sacred measuring system of stades showed a relationship to many ancient cultures, all ”derived from either the diameter or circumference of the planet earth upon which we live, units such as the English inch and foot, the Egyptian cubits of the pyramid, Ezekiel cubit of the Temple and the Sumerian cubits of ancient Mesopotamia being related in this way. It was my understanding of these formulas that allowed me to interpret Plato’s account.”

Indeed, Allen has been a plotter Air Photo and Air Photo Interpreter for the Royal Air force, as such, having access to topographical and GPS data, as Allen explained, “I was looking for a large rectangular level plain enclosed by mountains and in the center of the continent.”

Who but a man with this mixture of interests, from sacred measurement to topography to cartography would be able to make sense of what is found today in South America, a place called Altiplano. “Plato,” Allen stated, said that Atlantis “ was at a distant point in the Atlantic Ocean, in front of the mouth of the Strait of Gilbralter. That land mass is today’s South America.”

Bordering on the sea,” continued Allen, “and extending through the center of the whole island there was a plain.” This plain Allen asserts , “is the Altiplano of Bolivia.”

Asking Allen what were other major signifiers that he saw on maps of this area of Bolivia, and then located during his five expeditions to South America, that convinced him that this was indeed the central site of the city of Atlantis which was carved into10 kingdoms.

Plato wrote, “In the ocean opposite the pillars of Hercules, (the Strait of Gibraltar) there lay an island which was larger than Libya and Asia together.” Allen continued. “Midway along the side next to the sea was a long rectangularly-shaped plain which he said lay in the center of the continent , enclosed by mountains and high above the ocean.” Concentric rings of land and water, circle this capital and the city was walled by red white and black stone. In addition to finding the stones of those colors, the mountain, the sea wall and canals have been identified. Allen expects to confirm other details from Plato’s account.

Satellite mapping which Allen used, and as he points out was only available in the last two decades or so, “reveals that the level plain know as the Altiplano next to lake Poopo, is rectangular in configuration as defined by the 13,000 foot contour running around it.” Other details he recounts in his book will be presented on a learning Channel documentary called Atlantis in the Andes, to air in America, Friday, June 22, 2001.

Using the word Atlantis itself to demonstrate yet one of dozens of other clues already identified by Allen, it is composed of two words. The Aztecs used Atl to mean water, and in Inca Quechua, “Antis” meaning copper. Pointing to the unique disposition of this area to produce a naturally occurring alloy of cooper and gold known to have been mined by the later Incas in the Andes, as Plato stated that it, an alloy called orichalcum,‘ is the most precious of metals known, except gold.” The alloy can be found there today.

From pointing to Plato’s recounting of elephants and archaeological presentation to the described variety of fruits and vegetables and extravagant irrigation systems, even Plato’s account of an extensive canal system, has been identified by Allen, and the widest part of the canal, is as Plato said, 600 feet wide.

With an uncharacteristic excitement, Allen pointed out that he thinks Plato was incorrect in saying that all of Atlantis disappeared in a single day and night, but instead “only the city of the same name built on a volcanic island (typical of the Altiplano) had disappeared beneath the waters of the large inland sea of lake Poopo. ” And that during that historic day and night of water rising Allen says, the island didnt sink, it was swallowed up by rising waters.

My purpose in citing Jim Allen’s wonderful odyssey and effort to make use of an ancient account told in ancient Greece of yet an earlier civilization, is that we must as a modern civilization stop our arrogant predisposition towards believing that ancient cultures were primitive. In fact, it appears that in many ways their civilizations were far more advanced both in terms of their spiritual inclination, their astronomical and mechanical abilities and their understanding that the cosmos, nature and man are one. Looking at myths and ancient oral histories and records, not as invented accounts but as best possible historical records available, we can as Allen and other genuine seekers have found use our ancient civilization’s stories as a map to remembering our past and unfolding from it our best possible future, of another golden age.

Zoh Hieronimus